New hub for Hangberg

Hangberg residents can soon expect to benefit from various projects to uplift, educate and rebuild the community through training and job creation.

The projects include a peace garden, a soup kitchen and a community centre , which, once built, will provide various services and tutoring in higher education, technical skills and health and wellness, among other things.

Peace and Mediation Forum (PMF) administrator Marita Engel said the centre, called the Hub, would address a skills shortage in Hangberg. At the centre, residents would be able to learn about finance and business development, agriculture, tourism, construction and sports development among other things, while drawing on partnerships in the Hout Bay community.

Classrooms at the centre would be sublet to institutions or individuals prepared to share their practical experience with the students.

Ms Engel said that in the next six months, the PMF hoped to secure a lease agreement with the City for the land on which the Hub would be built.

PMF chairman Jan Lewis said the centre would benefit everyone in the community, especially those plagued by various social ills or needing home-based care.

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The Hub centre will be located on a portion of Erf 5606 next to the Little Angels Day Care Centre. The erf and the use of it has, in recent months, been the subject of huge controversy, afterLittle Angels was accused of illegally occupying the land. (“Uproar over Hangberg Land,” Sentinel April 8). A charge strongly refuted by the daycare.

Mayoral committee member for human settlements, Benedicta van Minnen, said the City was preparing an application for the subdivision and subsequent transfer of the land on Erf 5606.

Ms Engel said another exciting PMF community project, which would hopefully be launched in September, was the Koppie Soppie soup kitchen.

Warren Abrahams, PMF secretary and social development coordinator, said the City was upgrading the area surrounding the advice office in Salamander Road, where the soup kitchen would be based, due to water leakages and health issues.

“We are in the process of requesting a container fitted with appliances for our soup kitchen from a donor and hopefully, when upgrading is done, we will have it to place,” he said.

Ms Engel said the soup kitchen would aim to feed about 100 children three times a week in the beginning and then hopefully double that number as the project gathered support.

It’s also hoped the soup kitchen volunteers will benefit by learning how to make their own nutritional meals and then selling them at the advice office.

Ms Van Minnen said a contractor doing construction work at the future soup kitchen site was expected to be finished in a month.

Meanwhile, the PMF peace garden, to be established on the Catholic Church’s grounds, is expected to give young people in the community a grounding in things like permaculture, composting and nutrition.

Mr Lewis said the peace garden has already been discussed with the community, which had welcomed the idea.

“We are looking forward to rebuild this community and bring mindset change to give success to the future of Hangberg,” Mr Lewis said.